Testament to troubleshooting

[unitedcases]

So...doing a 9.5hr carve today. Big and expensive project. Less than 30minutes left and I get a z stall. Machine resets. So the first thing I do is examine the board and find no abnormalities that indicate a done bit. Then I check the ffc cable while doing the sensor check for the z motor. All is well. Blank off some of the carve and go to restart and get a check cut motor right off the bat. So off to the user tests. The machine says the chuck is spinning but it is not. So immediately I check the brushes and they are done. Mind you, I do my pm's every 150 and this was the last project I was going to do before my pm this weekend. So change out the brushes, (the bottom one was a bear), and the carve lined right back up. Luckily. I dont know if there is a moral to this but I have seen a lot of people give up on their machine lately. Just some food for thought.

[Digitalwoodshop]

Good job !!!!!

Al

[ktjwilliams]

These machines are not without there share of frustration and aggravation !!!!! Glad that it lined back up for ya ....

[TurtleCove]

Wow.
How cool would it be for the software to give us some sort of feature to restart, mid way thru ?

[RMarkey]

Unfortunately, due to limitations of the memory cards, its not possible. However, attempting to recover from a y/z stall may be.

[WoodenWizard]

Unfortunately, due to limitations of the memory cards, its not possible. However, attempting to recover from a y/z stall may be.

That would be awesome. Say you had a chip get stuck in a belt/roller or just a dirty rail. A quick wipe down, couple shots of air and "RECOVERY" and off to the races you go. Would not fix a major issue but I have had a few that a quick clean was all that was needed. Now just give us a timeline ..haha

Dave

[bergerud]

The homing and bit measurement process would have to be repeated while the pattern is kept in memory. One might also then be able to replace a dull bit with a sharp one if one thought the stall was because of a dull bit.

[TurtleCove]

What if it worked like this....

You go back to Designer, and open your project.
Then you open a side window called "Recovery".
This Recovery window shows a huge list of every pixel the machine was to carve/cut, for the project.
As you scroll thru that list, each pixel is highlighted in Designer, showing which pixel relates to each step.
Basically, you could scroll thru that list, and see how the machine planned on attacking the project.
I am assuming, each step has a sequential number assigned to it.
You scroll thru the steps, until you get to the step where you want the machine to begin.

Then, you go back to the machine, and thru the keypad, go into Recover Mode.
The machine asks which step to start on.
You key in the number of the step.
The machine then asks if it should re-find the bits.
It then begins the carve, at the number of the step you key'd in.
Very similar to when you press Stop part way thru a project, and then Start again, except now you key in a number, designating where to start in the project.

Possible?

[ktjwilliams]

Hey Dan, All that info would already be in the machine.. Much like when you open the cover and stop the machine,, hit enter and it goes right back into the carve... Maybe at worst the machine just may have to find it's zero points again, then go back and start up again where it left off... It also restarts for ya when U get a check cut motor error ... Hit enter and it goes right back into the carve ...


The homing and bit measurement process would have to be repeated while the pattern is kept in memory. One might also then be able to replace a dull bit with a sharp one if one thought the stall was because of a dull bit.

[unitedcases]

All I was getting at was sometimes you should put the frustration aside and just think how the machine does. I was just impressed with my abilities to save a 55 dollar board of sapele from becoming firewood.

[bergerud]

We are easily side tracked!

[Capt Bruce]

Just a small addition to the thoughts brought up here. I've had a few scenarios where a carving stopped mid board (insert your own problem here) and the only hope was to let it begin again and air carve until the same point was reached and the carving continued.

Key to making this workable was re-setting the start point at the exact same point on the board. My adaptation came with the addition of a small pad of PostIt notes on the side of the CW casing. When I've lined up the start point for a carve (dimensions on the edge) I simply pencil these on the PostIt note. 98% of the time the numbers are not needed but Oh that one "carvus interruptus" and that set of numbers becomes invaluable. Just my two cents.